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Patrick Tisdale of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP
Patrick Tisdale is Chief Information Officer at global law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP. He recently took a few minutes to chat about the concerns of CIOs during this uncharted, volatile economy.
Advantage: Patrick, what effect, if any, has the current economy had on the IT role and its traditional thinking?
Patrick Tisdale: The challenge for the CIO right now is that we are a cost center. Which means that, in a down economy, we carry just as much of an obligation as does human resources, as do our lawyers, and so on, to reduce our costs or improve the value received for our costs. On the other hand, we need to convince our organization that spending thoughtfully in IT can very well be the means to achieving efficiencies in the long term -- and even the short term. That's sometimes a concept that's difficult for organizations to understand when they are otherwise reducing headcount and trimming budgets.
A down cycle is an excellent time to carefully move ahead of your competitors by investing and through effective business strategies. That's because down cycles can be tremendously distracting as organizations struggle to find their footing, adjust their economics, and redevelop their services and products to a changed buying behavior of clients. When you're doing all those things, you can sometimes take your eye off of the innovating. The danger there is that if others are more creative than you, when you come out of the down cycle, they may have leaped way ahead while everybody else had their heads in the sand.
Advantage: I know you've been critical of what you call "followship." What exactly is that?
Tisdale: Law firms are part of a conservative industry that is somewhat risk-adverse and they tend to closely track each other, observing what each other is doing, and then following suit. Everyone is waiting for somebody else to innovate before they jump on the bandwagon. In that sort of environment, there can be less enthusiasm for development of new concepts or services.
Advantage: And following the herd puts you at a competitive disadvantage?
Tisdale: Well, it doesn't move you ahead. There's a cliché that "standing still isn't good enough," and there's some truth to that. If you aspire to expanding your market share or increasing the number of prestigious clients you serve, then mimicking the behaviors of your peer group is certainly not going to get you ahead.
Advantage: What about the risks of not doing what everybody is doing? Perhaps the others are doing things correctly.
Tisdale: Good point. Innovation carries risks. But you need to have a culture that isn't afraid to quickly look at an idea put forward by someone in the organization, perhaps incubate that idea in a prototype fashion to bring it to life, and then have a cross-section of your organization monitor it to evaluate whether it produces the positive effects you thought it would. You also need to be willing to quickly kill off the ideas that don't work. Sometimes organizations are loathe to innovate because new ideas, once approved, become runaways and sinkholes of investment. It becomes very difficult for someone to raise their hand and say "stop that train." But once the organization gets burned once or twice on big investments that originally looked good, they become fearful of future innovation. So there needs to be a steering or oversight group of a cross-section of the organization that looks at ideas and very vigorously supports them in the early stages … but equally very vigorously retires the ideas if they show signs that they aren't going to deliver what had been anticipated. By the way, when you do kill off ideas, you also need to be willing to say "no harm done" and then embrace and applaud the people who brought the ideas forward.
Advantage: Talking about risks, do you consider outsourcing managed print services a risk?
Tisdale: No. It's fairly easy for an organization to want to outsource something they feel is broken. What's harder is for them to take something that is working fine and want to achieve further advantages through outsourcing -- like cost reductions, quality improvements, or, as Advantage Enterprises does, bring a continuous awareness of innovation in the field. I would never have the time to stay up on all the developments in, say, multi-function devices that can print, scan, copy, fax, and e-mail. For example, what are the pros and cons of using branded printer toner versus recycled third-party printer toner? But Advantage, for instance, knows all the details that can affect what sort of service you provide your organization.
Advantage: So even in this risky economy, outsourcing is a good thing to consider?
Tisdale: Absolutely. Why would any senior person in a law firm want to spend much time at all trying to focus on the technologies and the service details of getting their printing done? They just need the effect.
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"Certain printer manufacturers are advertising that, if you buy their brand, your cost of consumables will be considerably lower. I'm thinking that maybe I should consider switching brands the next time I buy a printer. Is that a wise decision?"
There is an inverse relationship between the cost of the printer and the cost of the consumables. The more expensive the printer, the less expensive the consumables, and vice versa.
